Community Perception of Riparian Corridors Ecosystem Services and Implications for Environmental Education in Upper Oueme Catchment in Benin, West Africa

The assessment of the local community perception of the value of riparian corridors is relevant to understand their attitude towards the conservation of such ecosystem. We conducted a semi-structured survey on the perception and importance attributed to the ecosystem services (ESs) provided by riparian corridors in 368 households across 70 villages located in a buffer zone of 5 km of servitude around the permanent rivers of the Upper Oueme watershed in Benin. We found that local communities easily reported provisioning and cultural ESs than regulating and supporting ones, indicating their misunderstanding of the main role of riparian corridor. Moreover, the supply of cropping areas was perceived as the most important ES. Educated respondents and high-income households had more knowledge of regulating ESs and supporting ESs, respectively. Overall, the highly perceived importance of the provision of cropping areas indicates a potential risk of agricultural encroachment of riparian corridors. We suggest the consideration of the current local perception of riparian corridor’s role in designing a sound environmental education aiming at the change of local population’s perception. This perception shift will promote a sustainable management of the riparian corridors.

Future directions for using estrogen receptor agonists in the treatment of acute and chronic spinal cord injury

All synthetic and natural estrogen receptor agonists, in- cluding the most potent physiological molecule estrogen or estradiol （E2）, work typically via activation of nuclear estrogen receptor alpha （ERα） and estrogen receptor beta （ERβ）. Both ERα and ERβ modulate the expression of a variety of genes in the cells. Neurons and glial cells express ERa and ERβ. Many studies so far from our and other laboratories have firmly established the mode of actions that ERα and ERβ agonists are very promising anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective agents in the treatment of neurodegenera- rive diseases and injuries including spinal cord injury （SCI） （Chakrabarti et al., 2014a）.

All-Atom Direct Folding Simulation for Proteins Using the Accelerated Molecular Dynamics in Implicit Solvent Model

We report the results of protein folding （219M, C34, N36, 2KES, 2KHK） by the method of accelerated molecular dynamics （aMD） at room temperature with the implicit solvent model. Starting from the linear structures, these proteins successfully fold to the native structure in a lO0-ns aMD simulation. In contrast, they are failed under the traditional MD simulation in the same simulation time. Then we find that the lowest root mean square deviations of helix structures from the native structures are 0.36 A, 0.63 A, 0.52 A, 1.1 A and 0.78 A. What is more, native contacts, cluster and free energy analyses show that the results of the aMD method are in accordance with the experiment very well. All analyses show that the aMD can accelerate the simulation process, thus we may apply it to the field of computer aided drug designs.

Absolutely Direct Frequency Measurement of Two-Photon Transition Using Multi-Peak Fitting Approach

The optical frequency comb has been widely used in precision measurement. In this study, a multi-peak fitting approach is first proposed to fit the two-photon transition spectrum which overlaps with the neighboring transition in Rb-87. The multi-peak fitting approach is used to eliminate the frequency shift affected by the neighboring transition. With locking the carrier envelope offset frequency at 1/4 repetition frequency, the transition frequency is measured to be 770569132739.9 +/- 5.8 kHz, which agrees well with the previous result recommended by Comite International des Poids et Mesures.

Status in quo and future of geothermal energy in China

Energy saving and CO2 emissions reduction are critical tasks currently,and great effort has been made by Chinese government. Renewable energy consumption and CO2 emissions and reduction plan in China are introduced in this paper. Analysis is also made on present status and prospect of geothermal power generation and direct use in China respectively. Now,there is a new understanding of geothermal resources,and hot dry rock,considered as the future of geothermal resources,is likely used to generate electricity.

Three industries and water consumption of Beijing

Beijing has been experiencing a severe shortage of water. At present serious wastes of water resources result from the unreasonable structure of water uses in various industries sectors. The current conditions of the municipal water use structure and its changes in the industrial sectors were analysed and discussed in terms of the indicators, such as direct water use coefficient, complete water use coefficient, water use multiplier and water reuse rate, by taking a year of 1990s as the base year. Some response strategies for water conservation have been studied and the corresponding recommendations were put forward. All of these have provided a basis for coordinating the relationship between aquatic environment and economic growth in this city, establishing a system for rational utilization of water resources, and promoting the implementation of a strategy for sustainable development.

Experimental evaluation of a“U”type earth-to-air heat exchanger planned for narrow installation space in warm climatic conditions

The thermal performance of a“U”type earth-to-air heat exchanger is presented in this experimental study.The device has a serial-connected vertical configuration.The wells where tubes were installed have a depth of fewer than 3 m and are separated every 1.5 m,using an installation area of 3m2.The experimentation was carried out in March in Morelos,Mexico when the environmental temperature reaches 35℃ during the day.The performance of the device was measured and compared to the requirements of an office for cooling purposes within a university campus to reproduce the space restrictions found in urbanized areas.By using a small land surface,it is feasible for urbanized areas.The air temperature inside the“U”type earth-to-air heat exchanger,the surrounding soil temperature,the airspeed,and the power consumed by the fan were measured.The air temperature and the fan’s power consumption data were obtained by modifying the airspeed in four constant values,from 1.3 m/s to 6.6 m/s.Results show that the device evaluated in this work has adequate thermal performance for cooling purposes compared to the requirements of an office.A decrease in air temperature was recorded in a range of 5.1℃ to 9.4℃.Over 70%of the total temperature difference was reached in the first well,where the average soil thermal disturbance at 5 cm was 2.8℃.The device achieved a maximum COP of 12.8 and a maximum effectiveness of 88.4%.With these results,it is concluded that the system is suitable for cooling purposes in areas with space restrictions.This work is novel since the dimensions available for installation in urbanized areas are considered and compared with the thermal requirements of an office.In addition to the fact that there are no published works with vertical heat exchangers connected in series.

Image quality assessment metrics by using directional projection

Objective image quality measure, which is a fundamental and challenging job in image processing, evaluates the image quality consistently with human perception automatically. On the assumption that any image distortion could be modeled as the difference between the directional projection-based maps of reference and distortion images, we propose a new objective quality assessment method based on directional projection for full reference model. Experimental results show that the proposed metrics are well consistent with the subjective quality score.

Subwavelength-resolution direct writing using submicron-diameter fibers

A novel direct writing technique using submicron-diameter fibers is presented. This technique adopts contact mode in the process of writing, and submicron lines with different widths have been obtained. Experimental results demonstrate that the resolution of this technique can be smaller than the exposure wavelength of 442 nm, and 380-nm-wide line is achieved. In addition, the distribution of light fields in the photoresist layer is analyzed by finite-difference time-domain method.

Transmission of 20 Gb/s PAM-4 signal over 20 km optical fiber using a directly modulated tunable DBR laser

We report 20 Gb/s transmission of four-level pulse amplitude modulation （PAM） signal using a directly modulated tunable distributed Bragg reflector （DBR） laser. Transmission distance over 20 km was achieved without using optical amplifiers and optical dispersion compensation modules. A wavelength tuning range of 11.5 nm and a 3 dB bandwidth greater than 10 GHz over the entire wavelength tuning range were obtained.

Simultaneous estimation of time-delay and direction of arrival for underwater multitarget by using extended ESPRIT

Multiple sources localization is an important technique applied in many areasl such as sonar, radar, biomedical, and geology exploration. High resolution localization needs to employ jointly two sorts of high resolution estimators, time-delay estimator and Direction Of Arrival (DOA) estimator, both of which are tough problems attracting many signal processing researchers. There is also another difficulty that is to pair two groups of parameters in timedelay and DOA domains. In underwater environment, multiple sources localization research faces more difficulties because of the long duration emitted wave, limit aperture of array, and short data record of echoes. In this paper, an new extended ESPRIT (Estimation of Signal Parameters via Rotational Invariance Technique) method is presented. With a single echo wave, both time-delay and DOA parameters of multiple sources are estimated simultaneously.No additional pairing algorithm is needed to obtain the source locations. The performance of the new estimators and the probability of correct pairing is given by computer simulations, andthe results shows that good estimation can be obtained in low SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio) for multiple sources localization.